


Destructive Testing

by PuzzleRaven



Category: Prototype (Video Games), The Thing (1982)
Genre: Body Horror, Dark Humor, Horror, Humor, One Shot, Other, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 10:04:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21444454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuzzleRaven/pseuds/PuzzleRaven
Summary: On an isolated arctic base, a group of men know they have a monster among them, that has been quietly picking them off one by one. A bloodtest will reveal the truth, if they can survive administering it...
Comments: 4
Kudos: 69





	Destructive Testing

"MacReady, that won't work!" The biologist protested.

"Something you want to tell us, nerd?" As MacReady's attention fixed on him, the flamethrower swinging round, the camp's secondary biologist fidgeted in his bonds and looked at the floor almost sheepishly.

"I'm not what you're looking for, but I won't pass that blood test." Childs' outburst of cursing hardly registered. The scientist was actually smiling, awkwardly. Clark was glowering next to him, furious that the scientist had blocked his lunge for MacReady.

"Not the creature?" MacReady said, cynically. Saving Norris' life earlier with that adrenal shot counted for nothing now. Just meant they'd have to test Norris as well. "But you have sentient blood."

"No, you just can't cut me," the man said, almost reluctantly. MacReady grunted, reached out with the scalpel and pushed on the finger tip. The skin hardly dented. In sudden fear he pushed again. The scalpel broke, blade end skittering across the floor as he backed away.

"What the-?"

"Were any of you in New York?" he said mildly. MacReady swung the flamethrower up, swearing.

"Fuck. You're that M-" The smaller scientist nodded, almost apologetically.

"Fuck this shit. Prove you're human." Palmer interrupted. The biologist's head turned, any trace of apology vanishing from the grin.

"I can't." The expression was becoming disturbing. "There are a number of bodies and a singular entity in this room wondering what happened to all that cached biomass from the dogs." His grin got wider. "I ate it."

"All words. Test me and let me up." Childs demanded of MacReady. "He's got no proof of-"

The biologist stood up, the chair he'd been tied to falling into pieces with the snap of broken metal as the ropes dropped away. Whorls of red and black swept up his arms, across his body, until a faceless, clawed, thing stood there. A pistol fired on reflex and MacReady's finger clicked uselessly on the flamethrower's trigger. The bullet clinked on the floor, and the creature's head turned to him, then passed him.

The bound men screamed as it lunged, pounced, snatched Palmer and Norris from the lineup and pinned them against the opposite wall.

"Let them go," MacReady ordered, raising the weapon.

"Fix your flamethrower," it retorted, without looking back.

"Help us!" Norris whimpered.

"It's him. Kill it!" Palmer shouted, struggling in his bonds. MacReady stopped. Something in the demand didn’t sit right.

"He's been here since the start," MacReady said slowly. "If he was in New York, then he's been like that from the start of the mission. He could have killed us all."

"If I'd been hunting you, you'd all be dead." The agreement from behind the faceless mask was not reassuring. Its attention was still on the two men it held, if they were men. "Now, stop eating the humans."

"I don't know what you mean-" What followed wrote itself into MacReady's nightmares for the rest of his life as the armour split into tendrils, stabbing into Palmer's screaming body. Palmer's head extended, the neck stretching into legs only for a black spike to shoot up from the broken spine and impale it, pulling it in as the eyeballs tried to climb from their sockets only to melt into more of the black stain.

An outflung hand trailing snapped ropes pulled away from the elbow, fingers lengthening as it crawled spider-like along the wall before black and red bloomed in the flesh and it crawled back towards the nightmare of shifting flesh, to be snapped up by a dog's upper jaw that closed against the chitinous surface of something not from this earth. Many voices screamed, a half-formed limb pushing out like a knee in a blanket under the red and black web before it melted into tendrils that twined back into the nearest patch of melted, pulsating, meat.

MacReady's finger worked the flamethrower trigger as he swore, tried to clear it without taking his eyes off the seething mass of tentacles and mutating flesh that was slowly resuming a humanoid form. Childs had impossibly knocked himself from the couch, was pushing himself along the floor away from it by bound hands and willpower. MacReady didn't know whether to pray for Palmer or Mercer to win, but as the armour plates began to form in the hideously changing mass he didn't care. He'd shoot either. It wouldn’t help.

Norris was still screaming, held by the neck by a hand that never wavered even when the rest of the body was tendrils, thrashing in his bonds as the faceless helm reformed and turned to him. Something that might have once been a dog's leg kicked around its armoured middle before the last of the tendrils hauled it in. The monster contemplated its captive in silence, for seconds that stretched.

"Since you ate my rations," that tone was irritated, and MacReady heard the swearing as Clark realised the monster meant the dogs. "I ate your spare." Risking a glance down he unjammed the flamethrower as quickly as he could, for all the good it would do. The monster was still speaking.

"Now, stop eating the humans," it restated, in exactly the same tones. Norris gave a terrified nod. MacReady would have done the same thing, human or not.

"You've spread your cells through the base. So have I. Any cells not in this body," a claw tapped Norris on the head in a hideous approximation of a human gesture, "I've eaten." Norris said nothing, his eyes screwed shut, apparently too terrified to talk.

Seeming satisfied, the faceless thing shifted forms, black tendrils rippling into its old form, glasses, wavy slicked back hair, blue eyes, surprisingly light build. Exactly like the anti-social biologist MacReady had worked with for all these months, except he was holding Norris up in one hand with no effort at all.

"I don’t trust you." He said the first thing that came into his head. It shrugged.

"Fine. Just don’t trust this." The playful shake rattled Norris' teeth. The biologist paused, looked at the man with the curiosity shown a specimen, or perhaps with hunger. The instant passed, Norris' mouth working in silent prayer, and the biologist looked away in disinterest.

"So what do we do with him?" MacReady asked.

"Biological containment facilities by my lab. I'll call some friends to pick him up when they bring my rations."

"Your woofing rations," Clark said, disgusted, from the couch as the biologist walked out. "Really think your friends can handle this?" Mercer paused in the doorway, Norris in one hand, and grimaced ruefully.

"They've, uh, had practice?"

**Author's Note:**

> When I was trying to work out who won, it came down to the Thing having identifiable cells and DNA (the biologists identify them). Mercer doesn't, and is designed to break those exact things down.
> 
> Prequel? What prequel.


End file.
